


sheep

by ibgarry



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety Disorder, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Drug Addiction, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Mystery, Novel, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, POV Third Person Limited, Psychogenic Amnesia, Psychological Trauma, Romantic Friendship, Survivor Guilt, Suspense, Unseen Higher Powers, trauma-induced amnesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:08:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22593790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ibgarry/pseuds/ibgarry
Summary: Finding an outlet to ease his guilt, Ace Andrews, upon rescuing an amnestic girl from the snow, pulls his colleagues together in an effort to unravel the uncomfortable details of her past.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. Content Warning

**ATTENTION:**

The work of fiction you are about to read contains uncensored depictions of triggering content.

The content warnings for this story include, but are not limited to:

-drug abuse  
-sexual abuse/assault (of children and adults)  
-human trafficking  
-domestic violence/abuse  
-emotional manipulation/abuse   
-infanticide

Please be aware that these themes are present throughout the entire work and are not explicitly mentioned prior to each chapter. 

This list may change as each chapter is posted. Please be sure to check back to this list before proceeding to updated chapters.


	2. January 4

The “e” on the name placard gracing Ace’s apartment door had long ago rusted over, and three weeks seemed ample enough time to conjure the motivation to fix it.

He pulled shut the apartment door with meticulous ease, locking it fast with a familiar muted click. Bringing the collar of his jacket in closer to his face, he looped his keys between bare fingers and turned on his heel, retreating into the dark for an undisturbed smoke break.

He descended the well-worn stone stairs with practiced precision, tip-toeing his way along the beaten path. The ever-persistent hush, a sleepy silence… as long as he could slough off his pent-up energy in peace, he could make it to tomorrow with some normalcy. The practice, years ago, had become a well-loved habit.

In the parking lot, snow had gathered around the pavement and evergreens, strung together in quilted mounds. The black-iron hydraulic gate, like usual, remained shut fast, its treads caked along their perimeter with powdered snow. In its pillowy state, it seemed no one had come or gone either on foot or by car since Ace had returned home, inspiring the comfortable air of security theater.

Minding any rogue patches of ice, he carved his path through the lot, gradually coming upon the clearing of a cobbled path encoded to memory. Anyone else nearby, more awake and less able, would have reasonably thought him insane, but lethargy and fatigue weighed more heavily than danger from the perspective of bleary, tired eyes.

A typical January night couldn’t be any different.

In the absence of even a stranger’s company, that little park seemed a world of its own, a peaceful escape where he could find himself surrounded by mountainous pine forests with only his thoughts to keep him company. 

The tired ache of his body kept his mind plenty occupied in lieu of admiring the scenery, though, and several years of repetitive practice and escapes into the woods had rendered it a sight as ordinary as any other. It seemed, between the undertow of his responsibilities and the overwhelming current of his own troubles, he could rarely salvage optimism from what little he was offered.

The streetlamps overhead dwarfed him, casting an artificial blue glow around his shadow. The moon through the trees stayed always lit, illuminating the path ahead still packed with unmarked blankets of snow. A few miles off in his periphery, the base of a small mountain range dotted with trees obscured the horizon, littered with tourist destinations that Ace had only ever, for a very fleeting moment, entertained visiting. 

Out of his coat pocket, Ace hungrily fished for a cigarette and a lighter. From a hollow carton he emptied a single cigarette into his numb, free hand and cupped a fast-dying flame to his face, nearly fumbling over himself in his haste. 

Among the natural nightly sounds, his own shuffling, and the cloudy river of smoke, a murmur reached his ears. Eased by a lone, eager puff, Ace blinked warily into the dark, his usual lonely atmosphere unwittingly morphing.

The wind stilled. A muted murmur, in its place, broke through the cluster of dying foliage nearby, caught within the winter ghosts of the park’s flora. Faint sounds, in varying, desperate intervals, swelled in intensity.

A mild fear mounted in Ace’s chest. A clawing, a hesitant shuffling snapped here and there, an errant twig or branch from the brush. A primal instinct insisted he stood there unmoving, staring blindly into the inky black.

From atop a cluster of bushes lining the path beneath his feet, a white nest of fiber eased into his visioni. The mass collapsed, tangled and matted—amalgamated within a nest of leaves and brush—and Ace, no matter how long he squinted at its haphazard shape, couldn’t trust his eyes to tell him what it was as he bit down on the filter of his cigarette, withholding the bold inclination to scare it off with a shout.

A small hand came to rest on the frozen soil beneath the bushes, the pale skin around its fingers stained a deep purple. Along the outer edge of its palm, a thick spray of blood had dried to the surface, a thick and undried splatter glistening beneath the light of a lamp.

Ace peered tense in spite of the darkness, believing for a moment that he might have been hallucinating by manner of insomnia and whatever else still required diagnosing, a lethal cocktail of ailments even. 

As his eyes adjusted against the dark scenery, the sight of nails caked in a crust of dirt lazily eased its way out, nimble fingers carving and etching a desperate hold into the frosty soil.

Whoever they might have been, they were in a far worse condition than he was, mental state notwithstanding. The silence from beyond the trees, persisting, brought him a taste of ease; if he had encountered a sudden rescue mission for himself, he could have gone without being pursued.

Stepping forward against better judgement, he dropped his arms, hunching over somewhat to meet the face of a girl hiding beneath the brush as he ashed his cigarette. From between the dotted spray of leaves, he met red, lidded eyes staring unapologetically up at him, dull and lifeless. They were bead-like, agitated...

A girl. Absolutely a young girl, mottled and freckled with a spray of blood across her face met his perturbed gaze from beneath the dry brush, and not a hint of a reaction greeted him when they locked eyes. She laid lifeless on her stomach, a battered doll come to life.

His mind raced for answers to several desperate and sudden questions, unable to offer a verbal reaction.

A delicate hand reached towards him suddenly, pulling with it the miasma of dirt and blood, and Ace jumped back, freshly exposing his own tense nature. His cigarette fell with a jolt from his fingers, the embers fizzling atop a patch of ice. 

Glued instinctively in place, he observed from somewhere beyond himself as her hand reached out further to him, stopping just short of touching his leg. Her fingers groped the air, lingered, waited.

She laid there on her stomach, hand trembling and waiting for something to take hold. 

A guttural, insistent voice reached his ears: “ _ Please _ …”

A cold sweat gathered on his neck.

Overlooking the mess clinging to her extremities, he batted away the bush branches, and it was the girl’s turn to flinch away from him at an erratic attempt to pry her free. Yanking the more stubborn branches to the side, he took her hand and pulled.

Before she could move to stand, she collapsed into a mound of snow beneath the bush. Ace nearly recoiled before catching her, falling over on his knees.

The side of her head and a good part of her hair had been caked in blood. Jostling her had tossed the murky, sour scent of iron into his face, a diffused cloud from every inch of skin. 

With her half-dead body slumped across him, hardly lifted from the ground, he gleaned from his once-over observation that her lone piece of clothing, a paper gown, had been so violently torn and shredded that it hardly resembled any paper gown he’d ever seen.

Despite how the shrubs obscured the light and played shadows across her face, catching some light offered a clearer picture. To his fresh dismay, she was almost entirely exposed to the numbing cold of a northern winter, color long absent from her lips.

He gave his surroundings a once-over for witnesses before shakily scrambling to his feet, pushing down any second thoughts into a tight pit in his stomach. 

Ace turned on his heels and bolted, boots crunching against the snow. 

She hung limp in his arms, lifeless. Even through the padding of his thick winter clothing, he could feel each individual bone in her body press against his chest. 

Between the sights, smells, and sensation of ooze, it was completely, unquestionably gross if he gave it priority in his mind, but the absurdity of the moment alone and the dire nature of the situation left him too stunned to even think about something so comparably insignificant. 

He’d never seen this girl in his life. Worse yet, he would have thought her a corpse if he were seconds too late, he thought callously to himself, gauging the flexibility in which her extremities moved as he ran.

Perhaps it was the weather or the cold, but thoughts came few in number as he pressed on against the nettling winter wind, numb and confused. His scattered thoughts were struck down as dominoes with him, finding himself frustratingly preoccupied with navigating the parking lot.

What was the proper course of action? No one had ever prepared him for something like this. What was he supposed to do with the body if this girl was dead? More importantly, he thought callously...  _ why had he bothered to get involved in the first place? _

His inconsiderate notions, borne of self-preservation, made him feel—only as he sorted out his thoughts—like a  _ real _ piece of shit.

Charlotte, to him, was the most capable of taking on something so heinous, the thought only coming to him as he crossed into the courtyard. No one could have possibly been awake to notice him press on, but he clung relentlessly to his own paranoia as he carried the bloodied stranger in his arms, barreling across the lawn.

He was a bigger guy, built. No one would be to blame, he thought, for drawing a reasonable conclusion about him.

Frantically, Ace banged against his landlady’s door with his foot, beads of sweat gathering on the nape of his neck despite the cold.

The old wooden door creaked open, the beam of electric light casting Charlotte’s shadow into the alley. Still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she blinked hard into the darkness, an edge of shock creeping into her features at the sight of a second unexpected guest trembling in his arms.

“Ace…!” she cried, muffled behind the brace of the door as she recoiled. With a vigorous wave inside, she avoided his path from behind the door before checking his back, letting the front door ease closed.

Disregarding an explanation, Ace draped the girl across Charlotte’s couch cushions.

“Ace, what’s happening?! Who—”

“Just  _ give me a second— _ ”

“At least  _ tell me _ what’s going on, Ace…!” She whined, but his persistent focus on quietly swaddling the girl in Charlotte’s throws was an agony Charlotte wasn’t eager to sit through. “This isn’t funny!” She charged past the coffee table to the kitchen, rummaging with a clamor through her cabinets before producing a first aid kit.

Beneath his hurried touch, the girl’s chest rose and fell with a shake, hardly moving.

Charlotte approached his side, dropping the box kit on the corner of the table with a bang. Ace flinched. “I  _ swear _ , if you’d just—”

“ _ I don’t know _ , Charlotte!” Ace barked, hands hovering across the tired body. “ _ I don’t know _ what’s happening! I found her like this! What do you expect me to tell you?!”

Reaching past with a practiced hand, Charlotte pressed her thumb nearly to the girl’s jaw; she moaned in protest and leaned away, a tear springing from the corner of her eye, but Charlotte persisted, lingering for a few seconds at a time.

To anyone, it was clear she had been exposed outside for far too long. With few other options to act upon, he draped himself across her legs, hoping to blanket the warmth from his chest against her.

“Actually, stay there,” Charlotte instructed, pushing up from her knees with a huff. 

From beneath the girl’s head, strands of wiry platinum hair had gathered in clumps, tangled among the matted caking of blood and dirt. Even from an angle beneath her, his sight crested her collarbone, nearly bare and mottled with bruises. 

Water rattled within the piped walls of the apartment beyond reach. He was right, he thought in that moment, to trust Charlotte—she’d dealt with far worse before.

“Ace,” Charlotte called to him from the doorway, swallowing back nerves, “bring her in here, _ please. _ ”

Lending himself no time to prepare, Ace straightened up and edged forward, scooping the fragile form into his arms with steady, conscious care. He stood shakily, micromanaging every movement even as he took the first few steps to the bathroom. 

Almost completely out of his field of vision, he found Charlotte crouched on the floor, rifling through a cabinet beneath her sink. In short time, she had miraculously pulled her long red hair back into a tight ponytail and clipped up the sleeves of her satin kimono, set to a task Ace couldn’t name.

“In there,” she gestured with the flick of her head, motioning towards the bathtub. “Can you?”

“Yep.”

Had Charlotte not taken such abrupt, composed resignation in the midst of calamity, Ace would have carried himself with far less dignity, but it was only her acting the lead and guiding his hand that kept him grounded as he crouched forward above the basin, lowering in a girl who had actively forgone the compulsion of lifting her head.

At the sting of warm water against cold skin, she sprung back to live with a choked bark. Callous, petite hands seized Ace’s clothed shoulders, fabric bunching in her palms, and her agonized groaning proved powerful enough for her to peer at him through tears and grime. 

The cuffs of his sleeves dipped into the drawn water. “Hey—”

As soon as he thought he might lose control, Charlotte appeared at his side with a rag. Despite the screaming, she ran the towel beneath the running water, appearing relatively undisturbed until even the wailing seemed to die down and the girl lost her energy. Wringing out the excess, Charlotte swept the towel across the frame of the girl’s blemished face, at times muffling her beneath it without intention.

The girl, after a minute, resigned herself somewhat to the fate of being cleaned, clenching her jaw and lulling her head to one side. With each swipe, her soft features tightened and wrinkled in protest.

“Any idea about the clothing?” Charlotte asked, still monitoring the way her hand moved across skin.

“Just a paper gown, right?”

“I’m asking why it’s in tatters.”

Ace pressed his lips into a thin line, analyzing the way Charlotte swept the towel over the girl’s face. “No.”

With a solemn nod, Charlotte retrieved a bottle of peroxide from the counter behind her, pulling away to uncap the bottle with a stern glare. 

“She’s really going to hate this...”

Ace watched as the open bottle hovered over the basin, falling in a watery stream near the drain plug at the girl’s feet.

A steady groan built in her throat after a moment, and Charlotte reached over to grasp her by the shoulder, anchoring her against the tub’s backrest as her whining turned to a sob. She writhed against Charlotte even as Ace jumped in to assist, her squirming leaving vibrant streaks against the porcelain.

“We aren’t equipped for this,” Ace finally relented, retracting as the girl gave in. With streaky tears lining her chin, the side of her head knocked against the tile, her breath ragged and wet. “You’re not gonna like it, but—”

“ _ No _ , Ace,” Charlotte bit, whipping her head in his direction. “I can call Charlie, but I’m not—”

“And what will he do when he finds a dead body in  _ your _ bathtub, Charlotte?” Ace bit back, hands pinching the edge of the tub. There wasn’t any chance she would relent, but even he knew he had dug such a deep hole that his pride wouldn’t let him give in. “I  _ knew _ you wouldn’t like it, but who else is gonna—”

Her nose scrunched up, an affronted scowl building on her face. “You really think the police are going to get here any faster, Ace? We are  _ not _ a convenience to them!”

A weary voice was enough to arrest them both in the moment.

“ _ Police… don’t... _ ”

When a second, tiny person’s protests settled in, Ace’s pride soured before he could think to speak again.

It was likely to the benefit of his dignity that neither of them did, Charlotte so flabbergasted that she, instead, pulled out her phone and flew down her contact list to locate Charlie.

She turned over her shoulder to Ace, dial tone ringing mutely against her cheek as she spoke. “Warm up the water, please.”


	3. January 5

The frantic rattling of a door jolted Ace awake.

How he’d managed to earn himself sleep was beyond his comprehension, nerves still rattled from adrenaline, but a bitter frustration clung to his back as he charged through the apartment, trailing a beeline to the foyer.

With feigned conviction, he pulled open the front door, met with a blast of cold. In the icey entry, Charlotte stood alert with a bundle of blankets in her arms and a wilted girl at her side, standing doubled over herself in the cold.

Charlotte took the first step through the threshold before guiding the girl in with the wave of her hand, deliberate in her elegance. Shivering, the girl stepped past Ace into the dull carpeted entry, pulling tight Charlotte’s coat that had been draped across her shoulders.

“Just past this corner,” Charlotte guided her, standing just at the front door as she pointed to the hall entry. “Wait for me in the bathroom on the left.” 

The girl shuffled away, her head of wiry blonde hair hanging limp around her shoulders.

With her face buried in the stack of blankets, Charlotte retreated to the empty bar countertop just feet away and collapsed dramatically against it with a huff, arms still tangled in fleece. “Give me a second.”

Down the hall, Ace’s only bathroom door clicked shut. 

“Please explain to me everything you know about this girl,” Charlotte turned to him, propped up on her elbow against the bar. Her disappointment read plain as day, and he felt his heart sink in his chest.

“I’ve told you pretty much everything, I’m pretty sure...”

She dropped her head into the plush once more, defeated. “Come look at her when I brush through her hair,” she begged, muffling into the fabric.

Ace’s brows furrowed. “Why…?”

“I can’t explain it, Ace,” she huffed, her patience slipping. “It’s just weird. _ She’s _ weird. You’ll see what I mean.”

With the pile of blankets perched atop the counter, Charlotte backed away and charged off, headstrong. Ace caught up in an instant, hot on her heels as she set her path. Composing herself, she breezily pushed in the door, warm light streaming into the hall

Observing over Charlotte’s shoulder, the small girl stood with her hands balled at her chest, a layer of gauze once hidden by Charlotte’s coat wrapped taught against her limbs. Swaddled in countless rolls of bandages, she appeared unhealthily and unnaturally rigid, the stained bags under her eyes alarmingly vibrant.

From his counter, Charlotte reached for a compact brush, giving a glance over the tangled nest and chunks of matted hair before attacking it from the bottom with little restraint. As it tugged at her scalp, the girl bit down on her lip and squeezed her eyes shut, holding in what he was sure were endless verbal protests and groans. 

Pausing as she scraped along, Charlotte reached forward, cold fingertips grazing the girl’s face. Hovering around a near-matted clump of hair, she made a half-hearted attempt to sweep the heavy strands back around the girl’s ear, neat and clear of her face.

A pliable, long goat’s ear peeked out, freed from the pillow of curly hair. As if autonomous, nervously controlled, it twitched once before settling in place, tucked against the silhouette of a bruised neck.

From out of her sight in the mirror, Ace stared on with wide eyes, Charlotte offering a passing glance to ensure his focus. Satisfied, she continued her pace, paying him no clear mind. 

“Got a name, dear?” Charlotte purred, hushed.

The girl’s eyes darted up to gauge Charlotte’s expression before shooting away, affixed to the faux granite countertop. “No, ma’am.”

Charlotte’s lips parted mindlessly, and she stared into the mirror before turning to Ace once more. Confusion radiated off of her.

Beneath her, the girl watched them in the mirror. She turned abruptly, coming upon a sudden and frantic realization. “No, I do…!”

The two of them waited, stared as her hands hovered in front of her chest as if she intended to reach out. Her mouth hung open, ready to speak, but no sound came as her eyes flickered from one side to another, waiting to happen upon a second epiphany that never quite struck.

Charlotte spoke before Ace felt he could catch up. “So you… don’t have—”

“I do!”

Yet again, mystified and doubtful, Ace watched her quickly fizzle with each second that inched by, and he realized quickly that her own name, hardly residing on the tip of her tongue, probably wouldn’t roll off.

“What does it start with?” Ace tried, bracing himself against the doorframe.

As if he were the headlights, she retracted inward when she stared up to meet his eyes, almost grimacing. 

“... I don’t like you…” She professed, wilting further with every word.

“Hey,” Charlotte eased in, resting a hand on the girl’s bandaged shoulder, “Ace is… he’s fine. He won’t do anything to you, I promise.” Reaching past, she set her brush down on the counter, withholding a sigh. “Just take it easy. Have any ideas? Anything that feels right?”

The girl’s eyes quickly caught the light with a visible glisten.

“You made her cry,” Ace remarked, resting his head against the door frame to catch a discreet, concerned glance.

Ignoring him with the roll of her eyes, Charlotte reached for a roll of toilet paper and tore off a generous handful, offering it to the girl without another word. Unceremoniously and without much forethought, the girl buried her face into the bundle.

“I know you’re trying to lighten the mood, Ace,” Charlotte fussed, crossing her arms to stare daggers into him, “but this isn’t the time.”

What seemed like an important train of thought was muffled behind the mountain of paper. “... remember…”

Charlotte turned back over her shoulder. “Pardon?”

“I don’t remember.” The girl dragged the crumpled wad down along her face, pulling with it wayward streaks and crumbs of dried blood. Her eyes hovered over Ace’s reflection in the mirror, withholding a sob that rattled her frame. “My name. I don’t remember it.”

Observing from beside himself, Ace stood watching as Charlotte’s lips pressed into a thin line. She stepped closer to the girl, hesitating. “All that excitement is probably getting to you, huh?”

The girl nodded in meek agreement, focus flitting across the carpet.

“Get some rest,” Charlotte advised, gesturing to the door at the end of the hall. “There’s a bed just through that door. Ace won’t mind.” She skipped a beat. “Right, Ace?”

He hardly noticed her turn over her shoulder, eyebrows raised in anticipation of a response. “No, it’s— I don’t mind,” he nodded earnestly, righting himself.

Charlotte turned back. “Go on.”

Carefully gauging their expressions, the girl stood small in the center of the floor, wavering beneath them before retreating with a limp. Her head seemed to hang much too heavy on her shoulders, the tissue paper hanging loosely from her grip as she hurried to retreat.

Ace’s bedroom door shut with a soft click.

“What do you think?” Charlotte asked in a muted whisper, turning back to goad out a reaction. 

Ace scoffed with the shake of his head. “This has to be a joke, right?” he gestured, the corners of his mouth twitching. 

Charlotte met him with a frown.

Ace quietly stammered on, “I-I mean, I don’t know how you would fake getting injured like that… or even  _ why, _ but the ears? And her—”

“They were  _ attached to the skin _ , Ace...” Charlotte murmured, pressing her fingers to her lips in thought. She stepped past him into the den, shaking her head in disbelief. “When I pulled her hair back earlier, they were flush against her skin and everything. I looked.”

Ace reasoned, “But that could still be makeup—”

“Does that account for them moving on their own…?” Charlotte turned back, hand still hovering around her chin thoughtfully. “Or the texture? They’re flexible. Like cartilage, Ace. I tugged at them and everything, and they didn’t give an inch…! I would mess with them and she would react, they twitched when I brushed my hand or a comb against them… there’s just no way—”

“So you think they’re _ real _ , then.”

“I…” Her jaw clenched, scanning the air for a sign of something erring towards an argument and finding nothing. She massaged the bridge of her nose with a sigh. “This is so stupid. If it’s makeup, it fooled me. If you’re really so inclined, you can check for yourself, but you’re just making me feel like an idiot right now.”

His breath hitched. “You’re not an idiot. I wasn’t thinking that.” He kneaded his neck with his hand, growing tense. “But you’ve got to understand how—”

“I get it,” she relented, “I know. I’m just telling you what I saw, and that was that it’s all real. And maybe I saw it all wrong or hallucinated the whole thing—” her eyes widened, and she sucked in a deep breath. “And if anyone’s pulling shit here, it would be you! You would  _ totally  _ do something like this!”

“What?! Why the hell would I do that?!” Ace retorted with a whine, gawking. 

“I—I don’t know…!” Charlotte bit, shrinking, “But I wasn’t the one who found her, you just showed up with her...! How am I meant to be responsible for that?!”

Taking notice of the mounting volume, Ace lowered his voice. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Charlotte, seriously—”

“Oh, really? Then what do you suggest we do?” Charlotte gestured to him, crossing her arms over her chest. 

The confrontation of a question arrested him in place; he didn’t have even an inkling of an idea, and the lack of immediacy in his thoughts forced him to acknowledge how little confidence he had in taking charge. 

“Because if you’re not pulling my leg for kicks, you and I both know the hospital and the police are out of the equation,” she reminded him, “and I don’t have the space or funds to be boarding her up like I am with you. I’m so far away from stable it should be illegal.”

Ace swallowed back the thick syrup of tension, staring down a narrow path of choices. It had been a while, he thought, since he felt so incapable—and even longer over something he felt so strongly about.

The police would have been an easy solution. He would have been lying when he said he didn’t feel bitter over his hand being guided away from the obvious. It was irresponsible, selfish, even, to not take the leap in faith. 

It didn’t matter to him if a leap of faith came with inherent danger, but it was also worth admitting to himself he had much less to lose.

“I’ll just keep her here,” he concluded with a divisive shrug.

Charlotte’s mouth dropped open before she caught herself, righting her posture. “And you expect you’ll miraculously be okay with that.”

_ Not really, _ he caved quietly to himself, but he had already given voice to the thought and didn’t have the heart to backpedal. 

“Well, it’s not like we can just drop her on the street,” Ace said, resting a firm hand on his hip. “At least,  _ I _ can’t do that. If you have a better idea, I would love to hear it.”

Charlotte’s lips tightened, pulling in their red stain. “Not particularly,” she admitted, shaking her head at a loss. “Not right now, at least. If you gave me a couple hours, I might.”

“Would you have a problem with her staying here?”

She mulled it over lightly, staring holes through the wall with a concentrated brow. “A couple problems I’d rather not think about, maybe,” she admitted with the crack of a smile, flashing a peek of pearly veneers. “I think, if anything… I’d rather leave it for future me to handle. She’s better at that.”

“And will you give me grief if I ask you for some help?” he softened, dropping his arm. “Not all the time, of course, but just here and there.”

Charlotte exhaled, a scoff through her nose. “Maybe a pinch,” she answered, still smiling. “If anything, I’d owe it to you for letting a kid take on this sort of responsibility,” she admitted with a pitiful expression, patting him on the shoulder with a careful hand, “but you’re… you’ve held your own through worse, as far as I’ve heard.”

Ace smirked. “Twenty-two is kid-labelling age?” 

“Anything younger than me is kid-labelling age, Ace.”

“Kinda hoped a height advantage of… six inches?” he gambled, “would make up the difference. Y’know?”

“It doesn’t,” she assured him with a false expression of playful pity, giving him a final pat on the shoulder before pulling back. “But hey, um… I don’t think the bare minimum is going to be enough here…” she paused, “if you’re actually serious.”

“‘Course I was,” Ace huffed, sliding one hand into his pocket as he ignored the persistent idea of retreating. “What are you expecting from me, though? ‘Cause it feels like you’re holding out on me on something right now.”

Charlotte pursed her lips, eyes tracing his silhouette. “No, I just…” she mulled, “I don’t know, honestly, but not knowing is the issue anyway...”

“Guess you’re probably right,” Ace acknowledged, dropping his head. “The idea of feeding and boarding her up isn’t my concern, it’s more that—”

“The ears, the eyes, the not knowing her name,” Charlotte prodded. Ace straightened up, reluctantly buying the concept while it sat gathering dust in his throat. “We don’t know her, we don’t know her situation… and I haven’t set aside a time frame for ‘murder by association’ in my weekly planner. 

“If all that is real and not some elaborate, stupid prank, how do you explain it? How does someone end up like that?” Crossing her arms once more, she took a strand of ironed red hair and twirled it around her finger, piecing together a thought. “It’s a lot, Ace.”

“Well, you’re smarter than me, so…”

Charlotte cocked her head. “That’s sweet. I’m holding that against you next time we argue.”

“I’d appreciate if you didn’t.”

“I can call Charlie in the morning,” Charlotte diverted with a huff, swinging her arms at her sides. She stepped away, setting her path for the bar counter. “Or I might do it when I get back downstairs. It’s a jumping-off point, so we can work with that.”

“No doubt he’s smarter than me,” Ace remarked.

“He’s smarter than both of us, Ace,” she turned, scooping up a revised number of blankets into her arms before turning to face him. “And the coat can stay with her. My washing-out-blood-stains quota for the month is already well into overtime.” 

“Can you call him when you get back?” Ace pressed, following her lead as she turned with a path to the tiled foyer. 

Charlotte turned up her chin. “I’m not sure he’ll answer, but I’ll try him, sure.” Ace dipped forward at her side, grabbing the door. The swell of wintry air pierced him, and he stood stiff with a foot against the door. “And the blankets are for you.”

It was a considerate thought, he admitted, that she was close enough to know his night on the couch, the expected result of his decision, was lacking something crucial.

Charlotte spun over her shoulder to him, poised tall in the doorway. However subtle, she hesitated before speaking. “And Ace…”

Ace propped his arm up against the doorframe. “What’s up?”

She swallowed, arranging her words. “I know how you are, so—”

Ace’s brows knotted. “What?”

“You can’t keep messing around like you have been,” she urged, pulling close her mound of fleece. 

Vivacity bloomed in his face. “What do—”

“I’m not oblivious—”

“I didn’t—”

“Ace, stop interrupting me for one second.”

From beneath him, her glare paralyzed him, a maternal style of frustration that had paralyzed him endless times before. The heat cooled from her head, and she actively softened, losing her focus.

“I’m not trying to embarrass you on purpose,” she reassured him. “This isn’t the type of thing you can just… take back or change your mind on.”

Ace’s shoulders tensed, masking the red-hot at his core. Words he’d rather left unspoken signaled with panicked immediacy in his skull, unwilling to face the thematic lecture he expected from his landlady. “I get it.”

“Just… she seems troubled, and if you’re—”

“I get it—”

“Stop interrupting me, Ace!” Charlotte barked. “For fuck’s sake…!”

With a hanging head, Ace pushed his thoughts reluctantly inward, eyes locked on the concrete breezeway at her feet. 

Steadily, Charlotte took a breath. “Dude, you’re a great kid! I mean it. But you really get on my damn nerves sometimes,” she remarked passively, almost at a murmur. The stability in her voice returned in an instant, premeditated. “I mean it when I say I trust you. You’ve never given me a reason not to… at least, not in recent memory.”

Signaled at a pause, Ace concurred. “Thanks.”

“So, for the time being... if you bring anyone here while that girl is around,” Charlotte continued, watching as Ace held down a protest that strained his seams, “my disappointment will be absolutely  _ immeasurable, _ Ace. I trust you, but I know you and what you get up to. Restrain yourself.” She braced herself. “And don’t let me hear  _ anything _ about you tagging that girl in and—”

“Jesus, Charlotte, I’m—I wasn’t even close to planning on it,” he countered, an inimitable tone of disgust.

Her lashes fluttered shut, wrinkles forming at her brow as she strung together her words. “If I thought you were going to act out or do something, I wouldn’t have let you do this. I’m just covering my bases here.” 

Her eyes seemed irritated, red, but the shadow cast across her obscured an accurate view. 

“Women have to think about shit like this. You don’t. You know she’s not someone who needs more on her plate. I’m dancing around saying the obvious, but… you know what I’m getting at.”

Bent over in the doorway, the door remained wedged at Ace’s heel. 

“Thanks for trusting me with this,” he nodded to her, an underbelly of unintentional sarcasm sullying his good intentions.

“If I had any preferred candidate, it would be you,” she met his eyes with a relaxed grin, pressing her blankets close. “And thanks for sitting still. I know it sucks talking about it.” 

“This kind of talk isn’t enjoyable, I agree,” he noted, scratching at his neck.

Charlotte bit her cheek. “Be happy you don’t live in fear dreading it,” she advised, turning in leather boots off for the stairs.

Releasing the tension, a cloud of hot breath escaped Ace’s lips. “Good night.”

“‘Night, Ace.”


	4. January 5 (II)

The morning sun through the balcony brought an ache to Ace’s eyes, pulling him unwittingly to consciousness. Feeling the ache in his neck, Ace rolled off the couch to a stand, feeling the night’s frustration souring his morning. His jacket laid crumpled on the floor, shirt clinging to his skin with one dewy sheen of sweat.

The analog above the flatscreen, if still functioning, signaled 7:14. He believed it. Four hours of sleep, as it had always been, were never enough, and going back to sleep was by no means an option—not when it would mean waking up midday. 

The burn of lethargy pulled him back to the couch. He fell back against the cushions with a huff, kneading the sleep out of his eyes while he sat propped on his knees. 

Like it had before as he’d coasted to sleep, Charlotte’s wandering sermon on lifestyle etiquette, hours ago, sat anchored in his stomach, and he found himself drifting back to revisit the regrettable, reliving his pessimism for the millionth time. 

He regarded himself as a good person, empathetic and paternal as life had naturally guided him to be, but what he knew to be well-earned and well-intentioned criticism and concern gave him the chilly, awful headrush of cold water. His head felt light, and he reasoned that he had it easy. There was no blaming Charlotte for worrying, but no matter how much evidence pointed to the contrary, her timely lesson felt less like caution and more like distrust, like an expectation that he would let her down hard.

He wouldn’t let it happen, but it drove him mad. He stirred, ruminating in place for minutes at a time over the scene in sluggish silence. 

A murmur from across the apartment drew his attention—the stranger holed up in his bedroom that he had left alone. It had, at some point, been white noise, but he acknowledged it only when the sound peaked enough to be noticeable. 

He stood with a grunt, eased a few steps in her direction, and slowed to a stop. In semi-silence, he stood weighing his options before throwing caution to the wind, pressing forward towards his bedroom door.

Like he’d feared, he could discern from beyond the door a wet cough, the occasional congested sniffle, a ragged breath or murmur. 

It took hardly any thought to know she was having a cry to herself, but it held little weight over the idea that she hadn’t tried to rob him, let alone leave the apartment. She wouldn’t have gotten far given the circumstances, but consoling a stranger was much preferred over restraining one in either case.

A heavy gravity urged him to pull away, to give her well-earned privacy and keep to himself, but the leaden weight of guilt brought his knuckles to the door, another hand covering the knob. He tried a few cautionary taps before he manifested the courage to ease open the door, peering in with the drywall to his cheek.

Head tucked beneath the duvet, he was greeted with the wavering of breath as he stepped inside, painfully cautious on his feet. Warm natural light filtered through the blinds, a cloud of dust caught in the hail of beams cast over the mattress. 

Bedroom door still ajar, he approached the edge of the bed and brought himself down on his knees, hands resting on the uncovered sheets. It seemed almost assured that she hadn’t woken up to him knocking, but her shuffling beneath the comforter, hands gliding along the blankets, inspired an instant of doubt. 

Some difficulty came with navigating the task of waking her up, and he sat speechless and unmoving at her side for longer than he considered appropriate, wracking his brain for ideas. He was much larger and could hold his ground, had no reputation or dignity to protect, but something about her dwarfed everything that provided any sliver of reassurance. She was more scared of him than he was of her—probably terrified if she had nothing to provide—yet he found himself embarrassingly terrified of her in turn.

Failing to arrive at an epiphany, he moved impulsively, assuming inspiration would come when he eased back the duvet.

Some part of her leg connected with his chest before he could recoil, starting to life at the sensation of movement. With a strangled yelp, she kicked away at the fleeting sight of him behind the mess of blankets, grasping for grounding as her hand crashed against the blinds. 

She caught him in her vision as she turned herself, pressing a shoulder against the wall, and it took a good few tense breaths before the fog cleared. 

On his elbows, he stewed aghast at the reaction, failing to compose himself. An ache throbbed in her shoulder.

“I am… so sorry,” he began, losing all conversive footing when tears sprung up in her eyes. 

She held in her expression a defensive neutrality even beyond the squint of red eyes and a forthcoming of tears, unreadable.

“I didn’t… I just wanted to check on you,” he assured her, pulling himself up to sit and blinding himself in the confetti of sunlight. Specks of blood against the bleached sheets lingered in his periphery.

With a stream of heavy breath, one arm fell to the mattress, and her leg, propped up, slid to lay straight.

“Seriously, I’m really sorry,” Ace urged, unable to bring himself to stand.

She wet her lips, chest falling, and gauged feeling in the twist of her expression, defaulting to an adulterated neutral when trying failed. 

“My arm hurts.”

Pain was noticeable enough in the muscle of her jaw and tendons in her neck, lined in the vivid traces of bruises left by a hand wrapped around a throat. 

Ace peeled his eyes from the sight with some difficulty. “We should probably redress any bandages,” he advised. “If you wanna get up.”

Wide eyes locking him in her immediate sight, she edged herself to the far side of the bed, and he couldn’t help but turn away as he stood while she rose to her feet, stubbornly resting on high guard. When all fell quiet and she seemed to stand freely outside of his vision, he turned away from her and back towards the door, stepping confidently through. 

She allowed for a generous gap in distance to grow before tracing his steps into the bathroom.

The spark of energy had dwindled to a fatigued lilt in her gait, belatedly disguising her bleary-eyed trudge when she entered his field of view. Together, they awed at the sight of a stocked, generous kit of adhesives, bandages, and miscellaneous medication, a treat neither of them recalled Charlotte toting along before.

He was, perhaps, a much heavier sleeper than he considered himself to be.

“Any idea where you’re supposed to be right now?” he coaxed, rummaging through the display. “Any plans, obligations, a job…”

Whether or not she meant to, her concentrated, unbothered stare had him consciously adjusting himself. Lingering a second too long, she sucked in a breath through her teeth, face relaxing. 

“I don’t…” she began, averted, but the reflection of vanity lights caught in her eye as she met his gaze again, the signal of a menial discovery. “But anywhere—!”

“Well, that’s—”

“I don’t remember much at all,” she stammered out, a torrent of thoughts coming one after another, “but this place…”

“You remember  _ here? _ ” Ace gawked.

“No, I… well, I remember earlier,” she fumbled, grasping for the rail guiding along a much-too-delicate train of thought, “but before that… well, here, I… think I’m okay. If I’m in this room now and I’m okay, then it’s okay here.”

“I kinda get it… I guess,” Ace offered, his temple beginning to throb. Redirecting his focus, he fished through Charlotte’s kit passively, grateful to locate medical tape among assorted goods. “How about a name?”

His second question required no mulling over on her part. Instead, she tensed up, balling her fists, before wilting with the fall of her chest. 

“No,” she confessed.

“No clue at all, huh?”

She offered no response, and the generous gap in height between them left no opportunity to read her.

“Well, gotta be in there somewhere,” he reassured her, talking some optimism into himself in part. “But for the time being, we have to call you  _ something _ .”

The idea was an invitation for her to pitch a concept, knowing good and well he hadn’t wanted to put his heart to something inevitably temporary. Instead, she watched him mutely, expectantly as he chastised himself for not thinking before speaking.

“‘Sheep’ probably suits you just fine,” he teased.

“Sheep,” she repeated to herself, trying it from her own mouth. In the mirror, she watched her reflection as she raised a hand to one long ear, pinching the breadth of cartilage between two fingers and tracing a hole bored along its edge. 

He anticipated a protest, a guffaw, ideally a better (or any) suggestion, but she acquiesced with an alarming lack of consideration. Ace set aside a second roll of gauze, shaking his head as Sheep groomed herself at his side. 

Light conversation, he observed, came with the benefit of her settling into a workable, sleepy calm. Ace adjusted to her atmosphere by moving easily, lowering his voice, softening in whatever way he felt capable with little reassurance that she tolerated it all.

Navigating the fragile atmosphere as it was, however, seemed unthinkable. He signaled to the gauze. “Not sure how we’re going to work this around your clothes… but I can call Charlotte.”

Sheep’s nose wrinkled reflexively at the implication of undressing, but she complied with no trace of concern, giving little forethought as the wrinkled, bloody rag of a sundress, reminiscent to him of an adolescence spent partly with Charlotte, collapsed into a puddle on the tile.

He felt the percussive thump of his heartbeat in his skull, met with a sight once offered to him years ago at a frequency too tedious to measure. A cautionary check of sheer curtains drawn in the living room eased his nerves.

Unprompted, Ace realigned himself as Sheep finished easing her way into the basin, maneuvering through the room in remarkable silence. She ogled at the trivial with concerning, naive wonder where she stood: a towel rack, the mirror frame, the scummy blue shower curtain he lacked the energy to properly scrub clean. He moderated his gaze carefully as he observed her tugging at the fabric, focus locked on her face and hands.

“Enjoying yourself?” he goaded, hoping to inspire a more lighthearted air for the sake of his sanity.

His staring registered to her when he spoke, and she reverted to meek demurity when given attention, letting the sheet slip from her fingers as she folded her hands across her waist. Regret settled in fast, watching how color drained from her cheeks.

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to embarrass you,” he retracted, scooping rolls of medical tape and gauze into his hands. 

No varied response seemed to do the trick. To compensate, she met him with a nod in silence, kneeling down to sit in the tub. Despite the atmosphere he’d inspired, she watched him expectantly from miles beneath him, fidgeting with loose ribbons of gauze that had come undone. Restless sleep and any active movement on her part, he presumed, hadn’t done much help to Charlotte’s hard work, but a lecture seemed excessive and unnecessary.

Ace stooped to kneel at the tub’s edge, and, with some disguised fumbling, he lined up his arsenal along the edge of the basin, giving little thought to the attempt. Preparation drove Sheep to rest her bandaged arm up on the surface, yawning as she prodded and poked with her free hand at the freckled pinpricks of blood through the bandaged surface.

Ignoring her fiddling, Ace reached across her, drawing cold water through the blast of pipes. When she flinched at the start of noise, he chided himself in turn, finding his lack of consideration on her part had become a regrettable, persistent nuisance. 

A learning curve, he reminded himself… but “learning” alone already drove him nuts.

The chore of undressing bandages began with him emptying the debris into a free hand as he went, making an attempt to ignore how Sheep only grimaced when he tore off adhesive. 

He came to find, as he made his way up past her elbow, that her injuries worsened with gradual severity, and he easily convinced himself what he was working with was the source of her complaints before, praying quietly that no other surface hid beneath the gauze in such a sorry state. 

Blood was not a shy sight by any means, but the shift of tissue where skin split forced him to hold back a gag, only bringing himself to redirect his focus for a second too long on the shower backsplash. 

“This side hurts?” he asked, watching her face.

“Mm.”

No doubt in his mind it hurt, he thought, thanking any higher power for dodging the bullet of spotting it at its freshest. Steeling his stomach had limits, that much he could say for himself.

From where he sat, he reached across the floor to the counter for a pair of scissors he had mindlessly withdrawn, pulling them to his aid. He tossed the mess to the bin with little difficulty, electing to ignore the lingering stains left on his hand.

Doing dirty work in relative silence, warm tap water cycling through the drain, he itched to confront his stumbling upon her fit, extending a hand to allay her concerns. She sat swaying, shutting her eyes for seconds too long even when Ace motioned for her other arm, minutes crawling by with a naked stranger perched upright and poised in his own shower.

“How’d you sleep?” he pried, hoping to ultimately shake something of importance out.

“Mm,” her little hums of affirmation, now much harder to discern, were a suitable enough answer for him. With one rebandaged arm, she rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Okay.”

Ace gave her a fleeting glance. “Did you dream?”

Her voice wavered, “why are you being nice to me…?”

Ace’s brow twitched, redirecting his focus to look at her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Sheep blinked, squeezing her eyes shut against the ghostly burn of salt. “But you look mean.”

Finishing with undressing her left arm, the wad of soiled bandages was promptly discarded. “‘Suppose that’s a reasonable thought to have,” he yielded, reaching for tape while he pushed out the implication that his ethnicity was involved in putting him under fire. “You’re far from the first person to say so.”

She bit her lip, seeming to be unbothered by outward empathy. “But you…”

Ace looked back up at her from his work expectantly. He watched her mouth move to speak, lips parted, but no string of words came that suited her reasoning. She watched him with frustration when she failed to continue, as if whatever she couldn’t put into voice were common sense enough for him to conclude.

“Well,” he started again, extending another branch of thought, “you said before you didn’t like me.”

A rough scarlet blanketed her face. “You look angry,” she explained feverishly, almost vexed that he couldn’t conclude it himself. “It’s scary.”

“Just my face,” he quipped, feeling some tension in his gut release as his thoughts shifted. Sheep, as he had taken quick notice of, checked every box qualifying her as petite; having a foot and some change over her probably wasn’t doing either of them any favors to think of him as anything akin to “menacing”. “I get it, though.”

Her lips twisted. “I don’t wanna be mean.”

“The intention is there,” he chided, adhering a layer of bandage around her elbow with tape. 

Her spirits fell flat, shoulders drooping. “I didn’t wanna.”

Ace peered at her, setting aside the tape roll as he stooped to meet her face. “It’s not that deep,” he urged, composed. “Don’t hold it against yourself, seriously.”

“But you should be mean to me back…”

He felt her begin to snowball, a burst of inspiration hinged on a bizarre train of thought. 

“Why?”

The inertia of insight stuttered, drawing a boundary between them. In Sheep’s upturned brow, the knowing glint in her eyes, her anticipatory scowl, it seemed obvious. She wound up as if he would synchronize to her lead, finding the beaten path she was guiding and following along, but he sat before her brazenly perplexed, all questions and no answers.

He started again, “was I supposed to be mean to you?”

Wide eyes watched him. “Yes,” she urged as if it were the blatant truth, voice hitching.

“That’s what you expected?” he stared, fixated on the way her expression had morphed into something just short of wonder. Eager responses to his leading questions were not something that drew excitement out of him, but it was a manageable idea, something optimistic if anything came at all. “What about me says I oughta be mean to you?”

The joy was swept clean from her face, tense shoulders losing their energy. She had further lows to hit yet, but the absence of light that met him was enough to erode his resolve entirely. 

She sat in silence, shrinking to the atmospheric sound of bathwater.

“Is it just my face?”

She shook her head, loose curls bouncing.

“My skin?”

Another unmotivated shake of the head, thumping him with a pang of shock he didn’t deign to dwell on.

“My height?”

“Not that, but still a little,” she groaned, further discouraged at his failure to grasp her perspective.

He hadn’t disclosed his orientation, mentally striking off the idea. “My… my gender?”

Fresh vivacity illuminated her with hardly a trace of optimism, hair standing on end. “Your…” She raised her hand near her chest as if motioning for him to stop, wrangling back the impulse to reach out. “Because…”

A surge of discomfort filled his lungs. “Because I’m a guy?”

Her smile made its entrance. “Yes…!” she breathed, hand falling to grip the basin’s edge. She braced herself against it, leaning in. “Men are…! They…!”

He met her excitement aghast, dodging the hail of dreadful ideas before he could prematurely hinge his bets. Never in his life had he seen a small girl in such a sorry state appear so delighted for the inevitable grotesque. It settled in then that any loss of memory, pinned down with whatever naivete he stuck her with, was more than enough explanation to keep him from losing what little sleep he got.

“That’s…”

“Men are scary all the time…! Ace, they are!” she barrelled on. Ace couldn’t stop himself from growing disheartened, realizing she had spoken his name aloud for the first time only when the conversation had turned agonizingly somber.

“Sheep, people… men aren’t always like that,” he argued, hands heavy in his lap. He put no energy forth to mask his loss of composure, something just short of a grimace burnished into his expression.

“But they are!” she protested, adamant, though a horrible idea for them both.

“Maybe to some… shitty, awful people that’s true,  _ maybe, _ ” he relented, “and maybe that’s because you had some real assholes around you who fit the bill.”

“But every…” Sheep’s eyes locked on Ace’s shirt. “Always…”

Ace felt a twitch hit his hand. Pushing forward and driving the gravity she imposed compelled him to nervousness. “That’s not normal, Sheep,” he pressed, urgent. “People aren’t mean by nature.”

“Why were they?” A fractal of light caught in one red sliver of her iris, glowing as if even she knew the right phrase from his mouth would pry apart the rusted mechanism locking out her ability to recollect it all.

“Who is ‘they’?” he uttered.

She echoed, “who…” before both eyes, locked stubbornly on him, shifted for the first time away. With muted panic, they made their hopeless sweep across the landscape before, after the eternal crawl of a few seconds, the swell of expectation drained with immediacy from her palms.

Trying to keep the motion going, he rephrased himself. “What men were mean to you?”

“I don’t know,” she acquiesced, resigning to the unpleasant truth that inspiration hadn’t come.

He felt the blood rush to his head, drawing a helpful connection only to be rewarded with the venom of guilt: a chasm in his chest had split open, inspiration equally as dim arriving in analyzing the nostalgia in her lowered and lulling head, her voice at a murmur, her shrunken and injured frame, some new responsibility in which he took on an unfair and undeserved paternal role among the unlivable undercurrent of heartache and loathed some shadowy figure that he believed was better off forgotten.

Everything, small and great in their presence between them, smothered him in a wave of familiarity, detesting the wash of deja vu he felt rinse over every inch of him.

“I don’t know them,” Ace began, wanting nothing more than to rectify the heavy air. “I can’t even promise you’ll see them again, and I can’t promise you won’t because I don’t know anything at all about you or what you’ve gone through,” he stammered. “You could be holding out on telling us something and I would be none the wiser.”

Sheep didn’t move, staring lidded at the back of her hand.

Ace realigned his stream of thought, “But I don’t… think I’m mean. I’d prefer coexisting over tossing you out on the street or leaving you where I found you.” From one corner of the basin, he grabbed a washcloth, balling it in his hand, and ran it under the tap, warm water cascading from his knuckles into the drain. “That’s not the limits of being mean, either. But I’m not quick to anger. Can’t even bring myself to yell at people.”

“I don’t like yelling, either,” Sheep replied, bitten fingernails rapping against the porcelain. 

“And I don’t think I like whatever awful fucking people were in your life, far as I can tell,” he quipped back, realizing how abruptly he had adjusted to the sight of her when he pressed the damp cloth to a pool of dried blood at the curve of Sheep’s waist. 

“Swearing makes me think you are mad at me.”

His hand pulled away, a gap left between the two of them as the gears turned in his skull. “Would you rather I didn’t?”

Sheep gave him a decisive nod, lips tight. 

As if by her own doing, the nod summoned a knock from beyond the bathroom. The plans Charlotte had set to make hours before had fallen completely victim to his absence of memory, he recalled, and it all came flooding back just as the door opened, an unseen visitor granting themself entry.

Sheep made nothing of an effort to disguise her anxiety, studying Ace as she foreshadowed a reaction.

He dreaded the idea of being witnessed by people he knew well in the moment, adrenaline kick-starting his discomfort when the bathroom’s tarnished door hinges signaled an arrival. Anticipating watchful eyes on them both, he felt far too volatile for company.

A familiar head of silky orange hair peeked in, narrow gaze upturned. Sheep finally loosened up, visibly relieved.

“Good morning,” Charlotte purred, taking a step in with refreshing energy. Hidden in part by the door stood a comically overstuffed bag of luggage just beyond her frame, propped haphazardly against the wall. 

“‘Morning,” Ace answered obligingly. 

With an alarming lack of restraint, Charlotte appeared at his side and dropped to her knees, stubbornly tugging a vintage sundress down against bright stockings with a sharp breath.

“Ace!” she gasped, inspiring his panic. Sheep mirrored him closely.

“What—what’s wrong?”

Charlotte pointed, tracing the line of a scab along Sheep’s collar with an awed gaze. “Look at all this!” she awed, Sheep’s expression reverting beneath Charlotte’s watchful eye to resignation.

“... what about it?” Ace pressed.

“What do you  _ mean _ ‘what about it’?” she gawked, forehead wrinkling. “She… she looks better, I think!”

A flush settled across Sheep’s face.

“All this,” she said, guiding his vision across Sheep’s undressed stomach, “it looked horrible! Don’t you remember?”

“Well,” he tensed up, “last night was…”

“Oh, right, big guy,” she pinched his bicep, causing him to grab his arm and recoil away, “it was me who did all the doctoring and grooming while you did all the heavy lifting. I didn’t forget.” A cheeky smile belittled him beneath the ever-present bright stain of red. “All that panic and you didn’t even pay attention.”

“Are you ragging on me for not trying to—”

“I’d be happy to tease you for—”

“You aren’t an ‘old woman’ at thirty, Charlotte,” Ace protested, tapering off with dying ambition. He could anticipate most of how she chose to default in his sleep, finding a crumb of pride in nailing her down perfectly when she acquiesced.

Sheep watched on, expression a warped brew of concern and preoccupation as she held out her arm.

“But I  _ want _ to be an old woman, Ace,” Charlotte fussed, reaching over to bandage up a patch on Sheep’s shoulder as she spoke. “A nice, old, homely woman—”

“And I want a multi-million-dollar countryside estate in fucking Maine, Charlotte,” he taunted with practiced ease, latching the end of one bandage to Sheep’s ribcage, “but sometimes these—”

“You are swearing again,” Sheep languished, almost a bark in his direction.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ace surrendered quickly, pulling politely away.

Charlotte burst into a fit of laughter at his expense, and Ace held back an assortment of jabs back, conserving his energy in lieu of a protest. Sheep watched on, only able to mirror Charlotte with a weak smile settling into place.

“That warrants some explaining,” Charlotte needled him, resting a manicured hand on his shoulder as he worked unfailingly, winding ropes of gauze around Sheep’s chest. “I’m not laughing at you, sweet girl,” Charlotte brambled on, quickly fizzling out, “but Adam can’t…”

Ace’s gaze checked Charlotte with mocking disdain as she leaned her elbow up against the tub, resting a rouged cheek against her fist. 

Her smile weakened. “Am I getting to you for real now? No jokes,” Charlotte prodded.

“Just being polite,” he said, applying another strip of medical tape to fasten down his job.

“Ah,” Charlotte nodded, checking to look at Sheep before darting back to him. “I was gearing up for a seamen bit, something about ‘swearing like a sailor’... but you were being weird and harshing the vibe.”

“Why?” Ace groaned, smoothing down the bandages along Sheep’s collarbone to adhere a chunk of tape. “Did you forget Sheep was here?”

Charlotte turned on a dime, alarming Sheep with the slap of her palm against porcelain as she signaled the revelation. “Her name is  _ actually _ Sheep?!”

“No,” they chimed in unison, Ace winding up ahead of himself to embellish the truth. “But it’s the name she chose, so be nice.”

“No, it’s cute,” Charlotte deadpanned, so unconvincing that Sheep’s naive crack of a genuine, appreciative smile wrenched a sigh from Ace’s throat. Charlotte pushed herself up to a stand with sprightly energy. “And what will match her cute name better than the very cute old clothes I dug out of my closet for her?”

“Are you okay standing?” Ace asked Sheep, arms folded across the tub edge as he spoke. She stood with an elusive nod, pushing against the weight of soiled, waterlogged bandages.

“I made it easy on you, Ace,” the murmur of Charlotte’s voice teased from beyond the threshold. The mechanical click of a luggage handle punctuated the thought, caught almost entirely beneath the roar of hot water. “No clashing patterns, no blinding colors, no shoelaces… It’s basically late Christmas.” She paused. “Sheep, did you have Christmas?”

“No,” Sheep answered promptly, chin tucked as Ace tore through old bandages with the scissors Charlotte had provided.

“That’s criminal,” Charlotte frowned, words painted with emphatic dismay. 

The front door eased open with hardly a reaction out of her.

She continued, much to Ace’s relief, “Not having Christmas should be a human rights violation.”

“You _not_ _helping me_ right now should be a human rights violation,” Ace grumbled back, discarding the soaked heap of Sheep’s bandages in a mound at the high edge of the tub. A pink stream of water escaped into the drain. 

“Lay off of me. I got distracted,” Charlotte admonished, pulling the luggage away from the wall. Fabric shuffled, and it registered to Ace after a moment that she had greeted Charlie with a hug, a relaxed sigh squeezed out of her.

“‘Mornin’,” Ace called back to him, displacing a second wad of sullied gauze to the side. 

“Tell me you’re not doing that without gloves,” Charlie lamented, making his entrance to the squeak of polished oxfords against tile.

“Very procedural of you,” Ace shot back. 

Raising his face to assess Sheep, his confidence withdrew as Sheep shot Charlie a wary eye, braced on edge. The burn of secondhand embarrassment fed into a quiet spiraling of Ace’s confidence.

“Stop that,” Ace chided, patting an untouched spot on her leg to ground her. Her eyes flew to him, releasing a shred of tension. “It’s rude to stare like that.”

Her mouth, once agape, sealed shut.

“And he’s not mean.”

Her eyes turned vacantly to the side, breaking eye contact, and she acknowledged the thought with a stiff nod.

Charlie took his seat on the toilet at Ace’s side, pulling down the plastic lid and adjusting his posture to rest comfortably. “I would shake your hand, dear,” he began, catching Sheep’s rapt attention, “but I’d prefer if you conserve your energy.”

Sheep’s expression remained locked in place.

“You’re both overwhelmed, I’m sure,” Charlie remarked, placing a knowing hand on Ace’s shoulder. “But I would think that to be the default state of anyone mummified in gauze.”

Charlie’s gaze sat heavy on the nape of Ace’s neck. “I’m regretting that we basically summoned you for nothing, given what little we know right now,” he said, simmering in his seat. 

“I can offer you something, I’m sure,” Charlie half-laughed, resting on his knees to observe Ace’s handiwork. “If I didn’t know you any better, I’d have taken offense.”

“‘Suppose I should be thankful,” Ace breathed, honed entirely in on the wrapping of gauze around Sheep’s leg.

“I was told you don’t have a name, young lady,” Charlie crooned, pulling prescription lenses from the latch of his shirt pocket. 

Her chest rose. “Sheep.”

“Oh, did we remember…?” he regarded with interest, turning to Ace for an explanation.

Ace hardly expended the energy to pay him any mind. “We settled on one this morning,” he spoke listlessly, abandoning his inclination to dress up the truth.

“Very fun,” he remarked with aged, unremarkable honesty, brushed by the arms of his glasses as he set himself to work. He turned to face Sheep as Ace kept to task, laughter lines drawn in with a homely grin. “Where I work now, Sheep, we try to give our friends more modesty, which doesn’t seem to be a privilege you readily have access to. This sort of setting, while not what I’d consider ideal for examination or anything particularly invasive…” he caught himself, clearing his throat with a rumble, “for your situation, it’s an ideal substitute as far as I’m concerned.”

Enraptured by either his demeanor, presence, or language, she gave him a delayed, drawn-out nod.

“I’m here to help in whatever way I might be capable,” Charlie reclined, folding his hands across his lap, “or whatever responsibility Ace thinks I’m capable of handling. Can’t perform any miracles, but I can offer input and advice, take vitals, what have you…”

“Medical input,” Ace tacked on. “Y’know, when Charlotte drags you over here, you don’t have to give in every time.”

“A simple request over the phone can’t force my hand anywhere I don’t want it to be, you know that,” Charlie stubbornly pressed, composed admirably as he sat watching Ace from the side. 

“You  _ know _ how my brain works, man,” Ace yearned, withholding a stronger retort.

“I know it enough to not be tempted to smack you upside the head for going on and on about this every time I see you,” Charlie prodded back, maintaining his locked composure. He hummed, adjusting his frames, “An old friend calls, and I answer. I’m repaying her in a way I find comfortable, and you would be wise to accept that as it is.”

Ace mentally withdrew, feeling exhaustion beat at his back.

“‘An old friend’, he said…!” Charlotte chimed in, the loop of a pair of pink women’s underwear, unremarkable in silhouette and design, dangled precariously from her finger. “Did you hear that too, Ace?”

Moving down Sheep’s leg, Ace gave one loose end of gauze a secure tug. “Can’t say I did.” Preserving his sanity, he blocked out Sheep’s ever-fleeting focus, bouncing excitedly between parties as a helpless bystander as she observed the chaos.

“I often find it disturbing how you manage to maintain optimism given what we’re dealing with here,” Charlie spoke to Charlotte with saccharine contempt, an elbow hitched against the counter.

“I’m sure you’re also thinking all my energy is contrary to my interests, O wise one,” Charlotte supposed with unabashed delight, excitedly pulling his chain. “I can keep all that up  _ and _ stay thin with amphetamines. Just watch me.”

“Ace,” Charlie butted in with an arresting wave of his hand, abandoning conversation, “how much of either arm is in this condition?” His hand guided Ace’s eye down past the knee, deep sepia against the blinding fluorescence of Sheep’s complexion. 

Above him, Charlotte passed over the underwear to Sheep, who took it with mystified hesitance. 

From his fugue, Ace jumped to the task. “Uh, her left shoulder—our left—got busted open this morning,” Ace began.

Charlie interjected before he could continue. “And how did that come about?”

Any accurate and reasonable abstract that came to mind didn’t sit quite right. “Panic attack,” he resolved, a heavily-abridged truth.

Taciturn disbelief met his claim.

“But the rest is the same,” Ace assured him with a surge of conviction, guiding his eye along the bare bones of her frame. “There’s a line of bruises on the front of her neck, too. But the rest of her back—pretty much the whole thing—is untouched. Nothing on her back at all.”

After a minute of fiddling, an epiphany reflected in Sheep’s face. Ignoring Charlie and Ace, she stepped impatiently into her gift with soaked legs, consciousness entirely elsewhere. She gave pause, wincing at the ghost of pain that shot up either arm or leg.

“ _ Lord in Heaven _ am I glad you came across her first, of all people,” Charlie confessed, sliding his hands beneath his glasses to scrub his face. The shift in tone evoked Ace’s recollection, dragged unwittingly back to face Charlotte’s lecture to him hours before.

Sheep eyed Charlie curiously, brows furrowed. Ace kept on with a spool of gauze rolling freely in his grip in lieu of a distraction, working his way down Sheep’s thigh.

The shift in atmosphere took its toll on Charlie’s comfort. “I brought a few things along with my bare minimum,” he began again, hands bracing his knees, “so there’s plenty to work with and plenty I can look over. But based on what little you had to work with when you found her… visually, she looks roughed up, but she’s alert. She’s walking around. She’s not lethargic or—”

“You are very nice.”

The three acknowledged Sheep as she stood squarely in place, a gap in her focus fattening the distance.

“‘Course he is,” Ace breathed, attempting an encouraging grin.

“Charlie,” Charlotte interjected with trivial emphasis, “honestly, this is way bigger than—”

“More than a lousy pediatrician could handle, sure,” Charlie chided. “But I’ll just suggest, given what you’ve told me, that a psychiatrist is a better option.”

“Who would you recommend, then?” Charlotte pressed insistently, bracing against the doorway. “Because I’ll get in touch with whoever and cover it—it’s no problem, we just—”

“I’m hurt,” Charlie tossed in, “that you think so lowly of me that you assume I won’t do this for you.”

Charlotte wrinkled her nose. “You and your savior complex...” she snapped back lightly. “Let me be selfish and—”

“The reason we’re all in front of you right now, Charlotte,” he reminded her, “is because you’ve already been ‘selfish’ in excess.”

Charlotte’s throat sealed shut.

“I think we’re both doing what we can, Char,” Ace pitched in, severing the roll of gauze at Sheep’s ankle as he spoke. “I know how it is. But you should just…” 

“That’s curious,” Charlie noted, honing in on Ace. “For someone who didn’t want my help, you’re remarkably—”

“I  _ know _ I’m being a hypocrite,” Ace retaliated with a huff, swiping his supplies aside to marvel at his handiwork. He dropped his hands into his lap. “But I’m a desperate hypocrite with very,  _ very _ few ideas on what we’re doing.” He stopped. “And with everything we know right now—”

“Ace,” Charlie began again, pushing himself up to stand, “don’t waste your breath. I’m calling Jon whether or not you want me to.”


	5. January 5 (III)

With Sheep tucked out of sight, Ace watched from the door as Charlie’s car set off, turning onto the main road. Assured he was gone, Ace let the door swing shut. 

Sheep peered around the corner from the hallway, caught in his view as he turned.

“You—”

“She was hiding the whole time,” Charlotte attested reflexively, perched up leisurely against the back of his couch. 

Sheep shuffled forward into open space, instinctively shrinking herself.

“I had expected all that great progress to put you in a better mood,” Charlotte ribbed at him, bringing the neck of a beer bottle in close, “but you never quit being a bundle of nerves, it seems…”

“Calling a psych isn’t what I’d call ‘great progress’,” Ace deflated. “I was saving that, Char…”

The rim suctioned against her lips. “Drinking? With _ child? _ ” she gawked, eyebrows raised. “No no no. Daddy’s got it.”

Sulking, Ace marched into the kitchen, heart set on locating a drink of his own. 

“I’m hungry,” Sheep announced in Charlotte’s direction, unprompted.

“You’re hungry?” Ace echoed mindfully. “Come pick something out.”

Sheep blinked before breezily obliging, bare feet slapping across tile as she descended upon him. From behind, she peered in over his shoulder, maintaining a mindful distance. She scanned through the limited selection of his fridge, balanced on her toes.

She pointed in. “Apple please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he obliged lightheartedly, retrieving one of a limited few and passing it to her. She accepted it without restraint, scuffling off behind the bar counter to mirror Charlotte and perching herself along the back of the couch.

Nearly ten good sweeps over the state of the fridge assured him beer, to his dismay, was all but a memory. Resigning to indecision, Ace followed Sheep’s lead, reluctantly swiping himself an apple.

Sheep eyed him on return, swallowing down a generous bite as she clung to Charlotte’s bygone words. 

“Do you both have a dad?” she started, terse.

The two of them turned, Charlotte promptly recoiling.

“Everyone has a dad,” Sheep explained to their assumed confusion, emphatically confident. “So you both have dads, too, right?”

“You remember yours?” Ace inquired, expectant.

“No… but—”

“I didn’t have parents—I crawled out of a sewer,” Charlotte posited absently, seizing any opportunity to move on.

“‘Sewer’?” Sheep echoed, ripping a chunk from the apple.

Ace sunk, mindfully gauging the way Charlotte withheld emotion. “Kind of a touchy subject you landed on, kid,” he divulged.

“‘Toushy’?” Sheep tried, navigating unfamiliar phonetics around a slurry of apple.

“I think that’s a sign I’ve overstayed my welcome,” Charlotte stated flatly, hauling off to the front door in advance of a protest. “You two get along.”

Discerning hostility from Charlotte’s tone, Sheep jumped to a stand. Ace watched from behind as Charlotte eased open the door, maneuvering the narrow gap before disappearing from sight. The hinge drew the door back to a sliver, bolt caught firmly on the moulding. 

Out of view, Charlotte lingered, seconds passing without a fix. Yielding to his expectations, Ace moved to sort it out.

She yanked the door shut, rattling the latch.

Turning back, the sight of Sheep’s despondence was enough to indicate the blow of rejection had settled in, resigned to social exile. She hovered in place.

“Don’t let her get to you,” he advised solemnly, reflecting on his suspicion that another second motive had compelled her to leave. “She doesn’t mean anything by it.”

Her ears laid flat against a veil of hair, curtaining the low sway of her head. Needled with compassion and sensing the oncoming storm, he reached out for her snack, resting atop the hammock of her fingers, and set both helpings up on the counter.

“Think that’s the case for most of us here,” Ace shared, feigning a lighthearted atmosphere. “Family is… it’s all a bit of a mess, y’know…”

Sheep sulked, face hung dramatically out of sight. “Mm.”

“Hey,” Ace murmured, closing some of the gap, “seriously, don’t take it to heart.” He extended a hand, moving to rest it on her shoulder. “Charlotte’s probably—”

Sheep’s head snapped up, dodging his grip reflexively. Misstepping, forcing down her guard, stripped from her the front of normalcy. 

Ace retracted, taking a mindful step away with apologetic immediacy, but it took noticing a trickle along the bow of her cheek, just catching the dust of a midday sun, for him to stop and reflect. She doubled over beneath him once more, grounding herself with a hand around each arm as he sorted himself out.

“She gets in moods sometimes,” Ace persisted, hands welded down at his sides. “You just met her. You didn’t know.”

Sheep dragged her arm across her face, trailing it with a sniffle. A glistening streak of snot adorned her wrist.

Ace grimaced, turning away. “No one’s mad at you, so don’t just think we are,” he assured back to her, retreating steadfast for the bathroom as he continued. In the doorway, he kneeled over, rifling just out of sight through the vanity cabinets. “She’d hate to know she made you upset, but she deserves to know... if it got to you this much, I mean.”

At her side, he eased a half-used box of tissues into her field of view, hair hung in curtains around her head.

“Here.”

Face still veiled from sight, she took it from him carefully and grabbed for herself a fistful of tissue, bringing it up to scrub against her eyes.

Ace moved himself, leaned up next to her against the couch’s backrest. He stooped, closing the gap in height. “I’ll brush your hair back, if you want,” he offered at a hum, gunning to ease the tension.

Instead, Sheep took hold of one edge herself and swept it back, the pillow of hair falling with a bounce before cascading along her collar. She plucked another sheet of tissue from the box, plugging her nose with a huff. 

Unspoken rejection stung, but the burn of scrambling for another diversion seemed far more immediate a concern. 

“Will you be mad?” Sheep spoke into her hand, dabbing at her nose. 

“At what?” He eased.

“If I ask you too.”

In reality, the excitement and subsequent meltdown had distracted him entirely from what had prompted Charlotte to leave in the first place. To welcome it openly betrayed his feelings on family as they were, but the simple question of their existence…

“Well…”

Sheep eyed him at length, anticipating he might sink her hopes further.

“Ask it again,” Ace prompted, stamping a false smile to his carefree mask.

Sheep hesitated, holding back for an instant before obliging. “Do you have a dad?”

“I do.”

She nodded, accepting his answer as it was. She raised her head to locate her snack, sat aside for her on the counter, and dropped her head once more, holding out conversation.

Ace continued, “What else?”

Sheep turned to him mindfully. She scanned his face for a signal to his intentions before turning back, mulling over a range of topics with a tissue box cradled in her hand. 

“I had a mom,” Ace offered, “a sister, never any pets, too young for kids…”

“Anyone else?” Sheep pried, staring ahead at the carpet. 

“No one else,” Ace shook his head, hands leaning against the back support of the couch. 

Stepping cautiously forward, Sheep piled the used tissues and box onto the high counter and returned to his side, backing into the couch. 

“Friends?”

Ace stared before turning away, watching the floor. “Charlotte,” he answered bluntly, “and Charlie by extension, I guess.” He paused. “‘Suppose I’m more prone to making enemies.”

Sheep stared up at him, and Ace only noticed her when he turned back, catching up on the hush between them. 

He turned quickly away, snaking up a hand to knead a knot from his neck. “Guess it would be fair if you… came to a conclusion just based on that alone,” Ace added.

“You need more friends,” Sheep sensibly deadpanned, watching her food from a few feet away.

“Don’t suppose you have any ideas on how to fix that,” Ace quipped back calmly, anticipating nothing in the way of valuable advice.

“We can be friends,” Sheep offered, meeting his eyes with naive optimism.

“Um,” Ace hummed, scrambling to let her down easy and rationalize himself all at once, “there’s… I think it takes more than… than just—”

“What else?”

Sheep, however ambiguous in age she seemed to him to be, was by no means close to any age that made struggling to qualify friendship seem reasonable. A learning disability seemed sensible, even a social divide, and the more he thought about it...

Only upon considering the ambiguity of her age and approaching solidity in the idea did he realize the danger posed in housing her in his company.

“Sheep,” began hurriedly, stiffening.

“What?”

“Do you remember when we brought you here?” Ace asked, resembling something just short of an interrogator in his haste. “When Charlotte cleaned you up and brought you up here?”

“Um…” Sheep shifted in place, eyes scanning the air, “a little…”

“Do you remember laying in the tub and warming you up?”

“A little.”

“When you were downstairs, do you remember telling us not to go to the police?”

She came alive with a start. “No police!” She demanded, jumping up to attention. Tense with aversion, she tugged at the skirt of her dress with balled fists, expression demanding his pity. “No police…!”

Ace took a cautionary breath, brows furrowed. “Why not?”

“No police!” She echoed once more, emphatically begging near a shout.

“Not so loud…” Ace instructed, biting his tongue. “We’re not going, I just want to know—”

Sheep breathed heavily, still stirring in place. From beneath knitted brows, she stared anxiously up at him, chest rising and falling. Her lips hung parted, unmoving, unable to read him.

“Why did you—”

“I don’t know…!” she confessed, driven by nerves to a confession. With tenacious energy, she insistently shook her head, hands easing her skirt closer to her stomach. Tears sat, stinging like nettles at her waterline.

“If someone is looking for you and we still have you here—”

“No one is looking!” Sheep insisted, volume piquing again. “This is where I want to live! I want to live  _ here! _ ”

Her assertive approach seemed unquestionably, even intentionally misleading. She drew him back, but every conclusion he considered evoked more old memories of his adolescence and less of any hint of closure. 

In a troubling sense, Charlotte extending her business into a second teenager’s life, even if Ace largely bore the impending responsibility, established a trend of risky behaviors that led always back to her and her lack of faith in whatever institutions seemed relevant.

“I won’t leave!”

Fear came easily with uncertainty, but for a person with such distinct peculiarities, would he have room to explain the situation if it came down to it? Keeping her hidden from view, out of any higher system, seemed only reasonable even when weighing the consequences.

“I’m not making you leave,” Ace assured her, resigning to the fate he’d been dealt.

A life hidden from view wasn’t living. She was a hostage in his apartment, just existing, if anything else.

“ _ Promise! _ ”

Ace stared down at her, weathered from the labor of attempting to empathize. 

Her energy dwindled under his gaze. “Promise I don’t have to leave…” she pleaded again, uncertainty eroding her willpower. The nettles brimmed over, breaking the surface.

“I’m not going to make you leave,” he said again, driven away from swearing anything to her. 

What little power did he have, in truth? If the law had something else in mind, they shared equal footing in their power to resist it, he thought. 

“As things are, I don’t want you to.”

“Promise,” she snivelled, wringing the fabric of her dress skirt, “that you don’t want me to…”

“I  _ promise _ I don’t want you to,” he breathed, nearly a laugh, and the sludge of tension weighing him down seemed to finally slough off of him.

Sheep turned away from staring him down and stepped stiffly forward, tearing sheets of paper from his tissue box with her right hand before smothering them against her face. Dragging them down from her chin, she wadded them into a bundle and returned them in a haphazard pile to the counter.

“I’m waiting and waiting,” Sheep harrumphed, averting eye contact, “just to remember something… really…”

Ace filed through a number of responses, never quite landing on something appropriate enough to meet her with. He resigned to nothing.

Sheep stood in place, sharing with him the comfortable silence before she spoke again. “Did all that stuff really happen?”

Ace maintained neutrality, prematurely bewildered. “Which stuff?” 

“Down the stairs, I think…” she mused, harkening back to it in reverse chronology. “Well, before I got cleaned up… you were holding me and running…”

“It did,” he answered readily, confident she had trailed off.

Sheep hummed an affirmation and nodded, looking him over before easing in to grab her apple. She muffled the bite and eased into it, holding the sound in her mouth.

“Was there more to that, or…”

“Mm-mm,” Sheep shook her head, examining the bite mark she’d left as she chewed. “Just,” she swallowed the bite back, “wasn’t sure it happened.” She paused. “All of it?”

“All of it,” he confirmed, approaching the counter.

Resigned to accepting it, relief proved short-lived as he advanced, head darting in his direction, but her alarm promptly fizzled out, waning when he reached for his own food.

From beyond just over a foot of separation, Ace met the conscientious gaze beneath him, mouth hovering over his food. He retracted to check her for a moment, registering how she persisted in keeping watch on him even between bites of fruit, never second-guessing where her mouth landed.

“What about me freaks you out right now?”

Sheep shied away, easing off of her food. “Huh?”

“You’re always on guard, y’know,” he pointed out, taking a step away before leaning himself up against the counter. “What do you think I’m going to do?”

A rush of cold descended upon her, arms pulled tighter into her frame.

It was more than clear she perceived his prying as a threat, and Ace scrambled ahead of himself to explain: “I’m not trying to call you out, just—it’s like you’re expecting me to do something—”

Sheep watched from beneath blonde lashes, unquestionably threatened.

He stammered on. “How do I convince you I’m not planning on… doing whatever you think I’m gonna do?”

Her eyes flickered from his face to his chest and back, and she lowered the shield of her snack from her chin. “Um…” she started, giving no sign that she desired to put the energy towards producing an idea.

He would agree it was a loaded enough request, given they hadn’t crossed the obstacle of even determining what she was anticipating in the first place.

Watching him, Sheep set her snack down. She seemed hesitant, wary of all movement before extending reach of her uninjured arm, offering out her hand. 

When she stopped short of doing anything, as if awaiting a half-hearted handshake, Ace met her with the same leery raise of his hand. He gingerly took hold just shy of a grip, hand resting across her palm.

A tremble beneath his hold tipped him off; though she had made it more than clear of her discomfort and anxiety was assured, the clarity of its effect on her nerves was far more striking when he experienced it firsthand beneath him, a tiny hand bearing the weight of his.

Sheep gauged her actions in his stillness and comfort; bolt focus, she anticipated sudden movement with eyes tethered to him, expecting to predict any malintent fast enough to pitch up her defenses. Easing along with her other arm, she turned over his palm and took him by the wrist, and the pull of his hand closer above her waist demanded he shuffle forward to close the gap. 

Both of her hands supported his, reach still bent at the elbow. He could hear the rattle of breath, warm air brushing the inside of his wrist as she positioned his palm to rest against her cheek, fingers tangled beneath thick, pillowy hair.

Hardly a foot between them, Sheep stared headlong into his chest, a tremor or two ringing up his arm. She held his hand pressed firmly against her skin, both hands bolted to his arm. Her expression drew in, tightening as her eyes squeezed shut.

Her mental state seemed to deteriorate at an alarming rate until she gave way; she jerked his hand away without warning, jolting back. Ace’s breath clung to his ribs.

“Promise something else,” she started again, more of a question than a demand. Strain, once again, perched a ridge of tears along her lower lid.

“What’s that?”

“You will just keep your hand here,” she said, fingers encircling his wrist, “without moving suddenly or anything else at all.”

“Sure. Promise.”

Foregoing second thoughts, Sheep molded his fingers to comb along her hairline once more, palm caressing skin along the hollow of her cheek. She seemed willing to relax, trying to shut her eyes and block out the light, but they darted open once more to check his position before she was satisfied, eyes finally fluttering closed.

Pinky resting along her jaw, the quiver of apprehension shook into his palm, one of many insights into how she sucked in breath, taunting the onset of a panic attack as she walked its thin line. Worn thin, she slightly bowed her head at the sensation of a trickle spilling forth. Deliberate overstimulation, for whatever influence she sought it out for, came with unexpected intensity.

An irresponsible urge to soothe the drop away demanded Ace move to wipe it. Trying and failing to resist pacifying them both, he ever so slowly inched his thumb across her cheek. Sheep met him with a hum, almost a grumble, that she failed to stifle ahead of herself. 

Ace’s reach connected, the pad of his finger swiping the wet clear from her face. Her face twisted tighter still, distorting.

She drew in a sharp breath and tore his hand from her face; regret descended quickly onto him before he caught sight of her expression, almost demanding she bear his presence and stay put. 

In a rush of heady heat, she willed herself away, storming off towards the bedroom.

“Sheep—”

She swiveled over her shoulder, feverish, to check him again, stumbling blindly along nearer to the bedroom door to ensure he remained where he stood. Catching her footing, she hurried faster away before snaking through the door, slamming it closed with a vigor that rattled the apartment walls.


End file.
